Tag Archives: ebooks

A recent report published by EDUCAUSE has provided us with some insight into student views of technology. The results indicate eReaders aren’t taking off, and Facebook is far more popular than Twitter. Other interesting results from the survey included 96% of students saying they were on Facebook, with 7% of those respondents noting they used no privacy restrictions.

Want to know what the future workforce thinks of technology, how it uses search engines, social networking, and online collaborative tools? The recently released ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology gives some excellent insights into trends in college students’ technology ownership, perceptions, skills, and habits.

The 2010 report was recently released by EDUCAUSE, a non-profit organization that supports the advancement of technology in higher education. The report is based on a survey from the spring of 2010 of over 36,950 freshmen and seniors at 100 four-year institutions and students at 27 two-year institutions.

Over the past decade, different mediums have quickly become digitized. We take pictures with our cell phones and digital cameras. We listed to music with our computers and iPods. We stream movies over the Internet. We make phone calls with Skype and Google. Old forms of media have now been reinvented and absorbed into something new and different. The really cool thing is, now that these old forms of media have been digitized, we can now combine them into new forms of media. Below is an excerpt from an article about enhanced ebooks. It explores some of the ways publishers are now developing media rich electronic books, which feature books, movies, and in some cases, even games.

Enhanced eBooks Take Giant Book Fair By Storm

Is it a book? Is it a film? Is it a game? Or all three? Publishers and authors at the world’s biggest book fair are battling to entice a new generation of readers with the latest multimedia products.

That the electronic book reader has turned the book industry on its head is well known. Younger readers are no longer content to thumb through a printed book. The 21st century iPad generation wants interaction and variety.

But talk of the “ebook” that has dominated the Frankfurt Book Fair in recent years has given way in 2010 to excited chatter about the so-called “enhanced ebook”, a mixture of the traditional book, audio, video and game.

“In five years, books will be more often crossmedia products: with embedded sound, animated pictures, Internet links and … possible a gaming component, like alternative reality games,” said Juliane Schulze, from peacefulfish, a consultancy.

Some of the book world’s most celebrated names are already embracing the new format.

Ken Follett, one of the industry’s hottest authors, is expected to present a “multimedia-enhanced” version of his bestseller “The Pillars of the Earth” at this year’s fair.

Purdue Professor Embeds Hyperlinks in Printed Books

People who prefer print books over e-books may still want extra digital material to go with them. That’s the idea behind Sorin Matei’s project, Ubimark, which embeds books with two-dimensional codes that work as hyperlinks when photographed.

So far there’s just one book available in English, Around the World in 80 Days, with the bar-like codes. (See a YouTube demo here.) A collection of scholarly essays in Romanian, Mr. Matei’s native language, will be available soon. Mr. Matei, an associate professor of communication at Purdue University, says that the initial book is just “an exercise in pushing the envelope as far as we can,” and that scholarly publications will be available in the future with the embedded feature.

One of the goals of the State of Ohio’s strategic plan is to create more affordable textbook options for students. This article discusses some research being conducted by the University of Cincinnati and OhioLink to understand student preferences regarding electronic and print textbooks.

U Cincinnati and OhioLINK Research Digital Textbook Adoption

Campus Technology

By Dian Schaffhauser

04/22/10

An Ohio research project is investigating just how students would prefer to get the text for their courses–whether in hard copy form, in versions suitable for mobile devices, or in some other digital format. An initial study done in fall 2008 suggested that student age and class format are factors that influence which format a student will choose.

Researchers include Charles Ginn, a field service assistant professor with the University of Cincinnati Psychology Department, and Stephen Acker, research director of OhioLINK’seText Project. Their statewide effort examined the results when 2,000 students enrolled in 14 introductory psychology sections were given the option of purchasing a bound, print copy of the new textbook for $134 or selecting an e-text version for $50. Since the text used in the study was new, there was no option for buying a used edition. Ginn said the study included traditional-aged students (18 to 24), non-traditional students, students taking courses in the classroom, and students taking courses online.

The survey found that 22 percent of the survey participants purchased the e-text, and that 41 percent of those e-text users reported preferring a digital textbook to the traditional hard-copy textbook. Students in online sections were slightly more likely to purchase the e-text. Traditional-aged college students were 1.73 times more likely to purchase the electronic text than students 24 years or older.

As we continue to explore emerging technologies, we must consider the implications for not only available bandwidth and Internet-enabled computer access, but also the impact on technologies used to support students with disabilities (SWD). SWD often utilize various technologies (e.g., screen readers, JAWS) to access information on websites and in academic courses. E-books are considered an emerging technology – what impact do they have on SWD and their access to academic content?

Finding the Kindle a Poor Device for the Blind, 2 Universities Say They Won’t Buy More

Two universities say they won’t order large numbers of Amazon Kindles until the company releases devices that are easier for blind students to use.

The University of Wisconsin at Madison and Syracuse University, which have both made Kindles available to their students in pilot programs recently, say they won’t buy more devices until they’re improved. Though most Kindles read text aloud, it’s impossible for a blind person to navigate their basic menus because they aren’t “voiced.”